Until I Find You (99 page)

The Best Supporting Actor award was announced fairly early in the program. When Michael Caine won, Jack knew it would be a long wait for the writing awards, which were near the end of the evening. Almost no one sat through the entire program—especially not if you’d had as much Evian as Jack. But you had to pick your pee-break pretty carefully; they would let you leave or go back to your seat only during the TV commercials.

Miss Wurtz became enraged at those award-winners who overspent their allotted forty-five seconds for their acceptance speeches. Pedro Almodóvar really pissed her off; in accepting the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film for
All About My Mother,
Pedro went on for so long that Antonio Banderas had to pull him offstage.

“
Buenas noches!
” Miss Wurtz called out to Almodóvar.

They took their pee-break—that is, they took
Jack’s
pee-break, since he was the one in dire need of it—during the presentation of the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award. This year it went to Warren Beatty. Caroline was cross with Jack for causing her to miss it. Miss Wurtz had once had a crush on Warren Beatty. “Nothing compared to what I felt for your father, Jack, but it was a crush just the same.”

By the time they were back in their seats, Jack had to pee again. He whispered to Miss Wurtz that if he
didn’t
win, he would have to pee in his Evian bottle. (Jack was counting on there being a men’s room backstage—if he could get there.)

Finally,
the writing awards came; thankfully the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay preceded the award for Best Original Screenplay. Kevin Spacey was the lone presenter. Annette Bening was supposed to join him onstage, but she was arguably too pregnant to risk the short trip from her seat. Spacey made a joke about how she was “due to go into production herself.” He said further: “I could not ask her to climb stairs, unless of course she wins the Oscar. Then she’ll climb up here on all fours.”

Jack took this as an unfavorable omen for his chances to win. Given his night in Helsinki with the pregnant aerobics instructor, the very idea of Annette Bening on all fours in her condition filled him with remorse. But it was only seconds after that bad moment when Kevin Spacey said, “And the Oscar goes to—” Jack didn’t hear the rest because Miss Wurtz was shrieking.

“Think of how happy William is for you, Jack,” she shouted in his ear, between kisses. Of course the camera was on them, and Jack was aware of The Wurtz looking past him to the camera; she knew exactly where the camera was because it had been pointed at Harvey Weinstein, the former prizefighter, all night. Jack was on his feet—Richard was kissing him, Wild Bill, too. Harvey crushed Miss Wurtz
and
Jack in one embrace. When Jack stepped into the aisle, he saw Caroline blow a kiss to the camera—her lips forming the name
William
as she did so.

Jack took the Oscar from Kevin Spacey and spoke for only thirty-five of his allotted forty-five seconds; in a small way, this made up for Pedro Almodóvar thanking the Virgin of Guadalupe, the Virgin of La Cabeza, the Sacred Heart of Mary, and all the rest of the living and the dead. Of course Jack thanked his third-grade teacher, Miss Caroline Wurtz, because he knew that the camera would go to her if he did. He thanked Mr. Ramsey, too, and naturally he thanked Richard, and Wild Bill, and everyone at Miramax. Most of all, Jack thanked Emma Oastler for everything she’d done for him, and—largely because he knew how angry it would make the blonde—he thanked Leslie Oastler for her contributions to the screenplay. Lastly, Jack thanked Michele Maher for staying up late to watch him. (In his heart, he hoped Michele’s
sort-of
boyfriend was watching, too. Hearing Jack thank Michele might make the boyfriend jealous and lead to their breaking up.)

Jack might have used the full forty-five seconds if he hadn’t had to pee so badly. When he left the stage with Kevin Spacey, they passed Mel Gibson coming on—Mel was the presenter for the Best Original Screenplay award, which would go to Alan Ball for
American Beauty.
Tom Cruise, a fellow former wrestler, tried to wrestle the Oscar away from Jack backstage; the way Jack had to pee, that bit of friendly fooling around could have ended badly. Clint Eastwood spoke to Jack. (He said: “Way to go, kid,” or words to that effect. Jack knew he couldn’t trust his memory of moments like that—the ones that mattered too much.)

Jack was still seeking the whereabouts of the men’s room when Alan Ball came offstage with his Oscar, and Jack congratulated him. (“Good job, mate,” Jack thought Mel Gibson said, but had Mel been speaking to Jack or to Alan?) After a night of waiting, everything seemed over so quickly.

At last Jack found the place he was looking for. His relief turned to awkwardness almost immediately, however, because he had never been to a men’s room with an Academy Award before. Leslie Oastler had attempted to diminish Oscar by describing him as a “gold, bald, naked man holding what is
alleged
to be his sword,” but in Jack’s estimation, an Oscar was longer than a porn star’s penis and a whole lot heavier. Jack wouldn’t recommend peeing with one.

It was an experience in childlike clumsiness that reminded him of Marja-Liisa’s four-year-old peeing in his parka pocket at the Hotel Torni. Jack couldn’t quite get the hang of it, so to speak. He tried pinning the Oscar under one arm, but that didn’t work very well. If you’ve just won your first Academy Award, fully understanding that you might never win another one, you’re not inclined to put it down on the floor of a public men’s room—nor would you attempt to balance it on the urinal by maintaining perilous little contact with Oscar’s sleek head by means of your chin.

Jack was glad he was alone in the men’s room; there was no one to observe his embarrassing struggle—or so he thought. Suddenly he saw, at the opposite end of the row of urinals, that there
was
someone else there. The fellow appeared to have finished with his business; no one could help but notice how Jack was failing to do his.

The man was broad-shouldered, with a weightlifter’s crafted body and an unbreakable-looking jaw. Jack didn’t recognize him right away, nor did he remember that the former bodybuilder had been a presenter; from Jack’s perspective, the opposite end of the row of urinals seemed a football field away. But Jack had no trouble identifying the big man’s inimitable Austrian accent.

“Would you like me to give you a hand with that?” Arnold Schwarzenegger asked.

“No, thank you—I can manage,” Jack answered.

“Goodness, I hope he meant he would give you a hand with the
Oscar
!” Miss Wurtz said later, when Jack told her the story. Well, of
course
Arnold had meant the Oscar—he was just being nice! (That the future governor of California might have been offering to hold Jack’s
penis
was unthinkable!)

It was bedlam backstage. At the next television commercial, Jack went back to his seat in the auditorium; he didn’t want to leave Miss Wurtz unattended. She might ask Harvey Weinstein about his greatest fights, Jack was thinking. Or, God forbid, what if there were a power outage and Miss Wurtz suffered an uncontrollable flashback to her experience in the bat-cave exhibit at the Royal Ontario Museum? But by then the evening was winding down;
The Slush-Pile Reader
had won its only Oscar. It was
American Beauty
’s night, but it was Jack’s night and Emma’s night, too.

Miss Wurtz was perplexed that she could see no evidence of
dancing
at the Board of Governors Ball—the dinner party at the Shrine Auditorium after the Academy Awards. No amount of explaining could convince her that
ball
was an acceptable description of the occasion, but what did Jack care? He was happy.

They ate dinner at a table with Meryl Streep, who’d brought her daughter. Jack could see the wheels of The Wurtz’s mind spinning: here was that woman from
Sophie’s Choice
with an actual, living child! Jack told Erica that he thought they should leave and go to another party before Caroline committed whatever she was imagining to words.

They went to the
Vanity Fair
party at Morton’s next; Erica got them there somehow. Jack remembered how long he and Emma had waited to get into that party the night he’d been nominated but
didn’t
win the Oscar. It makes a difference when you win. Their limo driver waved the gold, bald, naked man out the window and they were swiftly ushered through the traffic. Hugh Hefner (among others) appeared to have arrived before them; probably Hugh had come early because he hadn’t been at the Shrine. The
Playboy
founding publisher had those twins with him—Sandy and Mandy.

Miss Wurtz was more incensed at Hef than she’d been at the anti-pornography people. “What does that dirty old man think he’s doing with those young girls?” Caroline said to Erica and Jack.

Rob Lowe and Mike Meyers and Dennis Miller were all talking about something, but they stopped the second Jack got near them. When that happened to him around men, Jack couldn’t help but think that they’d been talking about him as a
girl.
As it happened, Jack was on his way to the men’s room again—although this time he’d left his Academy Award with Erica and Miss Wurtz.

They went next to the Miramax party at the Polo Lounge in the Beverly Hills Hotel. Jack knew that Richard and Wild Bill would be there; he just wanted to be with friends. Miss Wurtz once more avoided making any prizefighter references to Harvey Weinstein.

Caroline had a little too much champagne. Jack had a beer—a green bottle of Heineken, which looked especially green alongside the gold of his Oscar. (He couldn’t remember when he’d last had a whole beer—maybe when he was a college student.)

Then there was a breakfast party in another area of the Beverly Hills Hotel. They went to that, too. It must have started at three or four in the morning. Roger Ebert was there; he was eating his breakfast on a bed, which Jack found peculiar. Jack was nice to him, although Roger had savaged
The Slush-Pile Reader.
Roger’s wife and daughter were very nice; they informed Miss Wurtz that
they’d
liked the movie. It pleased Jack to think that he and Emma might have caused an argument in the Ebert family.

It was about 5:00
A.M.
when Jack told Miss Wurtz that he was tired and wanted to go to bed. “We can go back to our hotel, Jack,” she told him, “but you
can’t
go to bed. Not until you tell me about the second time in Amsterdam.” She’d had it on her mind the whole night, The Wurtz went on to say. She knew she couldn’t sleep until she heard the story.

Jack told Erica that they had to leave, and she rode with them in the limo back to the Four Seasons. On a side street in Beverly Hills, they got stuck behind a garbage truck—the only traffic they encountered at that time on a Monday morning. The smell of the garbage wafted over them in their limousine, as if to remind Jack—even with his newly won Oscar in hand—that there are some things you can’t escape, and they will find you.

Jack was okay telling Miss Wurtz about the Amsterdam business; only the end of the story was difficult. Dr. García would have been proud of him—no tears, no shouting. When Jack told Caroline how his heart wasn’t in that first meeting with Richard Gladstein and William Vanvleck—that he kept thinking about the
other
William—the southern California sun was streaming in the open windows of the living room of the two-bedroom suite at the Four Seasons. Miss Wurtz and Jack were seated on the couch in their matching white terry-cloth bathrobes—their bare feet on the glass-topped coffee table, where the Oscar gleamed. Caroline’s toenails were painted a rose-pink color. The sunlight seemed especially bright on her toenails, and on the Oscar—and on the lustrous black piano, which was shining like a pool of oil.

“Don’t look at my feet, Jack,” Miss Wurtz said. “My feet are the oldest part of me. I must have been born feet first.”

But Jack Burns was miles away, in the dark of night—the streetlights reflecting in the Herengracht canal. Richard Gladstein and Wild Bill Vanvleck and Jack had been talking in the restaurant called Zuid Zeeland, and Wild Bill’s much younger girlfriend—Anneke, the anchorwoman—was looking restless and bored. (How much fun is it to be young and green-eyed and beautiful, and have three men talking to one another and ignoring you—especially when they’re talking about how to make a movie from a novel you haven’t read?)

As little as Jack’s heart was in it, he saw that he and Richard and Wild Bill were all on the same page; they seemed to agree about what needed tweaking in the script, and about the tone the film must have. Richard’s eyes kept closing—he was falling asleep because of his jet lag. Wild Bill was teasing him, to the effect that Richard was not allowed to fall asleep before he signed the check. “Producers pay the bills!” Vanvleck was chanting; he was a man who loved his red wine.

Out on the Herengracht, Richard woke up a little in the damp night air. It seemed inevitable to Jack now that Wild Bill would suggest a stroll through the red-light district, but it took him by surprise at the time. When they walked past the first few girls in their windows and doorways, Jack could tell that Richard was wide awake. Anneke was still bored. Jack had the feeling that Wild Bill took all his out-of-town friends on a tour of the red-light district; after all, it was the homicide territory of his TV series and he knew the district well. (Almost as well as Jack knew it, but Jack didn’t let on that he’d ever been there before.)

Anneke livened up a little, most noticeably when she observed how the prostitutes in their windows and doorways recognized Jack Burns as frequently as they recognized her. As an attractive anchorwoman, she was a famous fixture on Dutch television—but no more famous than Jack was. And not only was Jack a movie star; he had the added advantage of Nico Oudejans telling all the whores in the district to be on the lookout for him.

“You cocktease, Jack!” one of the transvestite prostitutes called out; she was Brazilian, probably. (Those chicks with dicks were out to get him.) This captured Anneke’s attention, but Wild Bill had downed a couple of bottles of red wine; he didn’t notice. The Mad Dutchman was lecturing Richard nonstop.